Danny folded forward over the witness rail, one hand covering his face.
“I was trying to stop her,” he said, voice breaking. “She was screaming and fighting, and I put my forearm across her throat, and I held her down, and when I let her up she?—”
He choked on the words.
“No,” David said.
Danny was crying now.
“I tried CPR. I tried everything. I swear to God, I tried. But she was gone.”
A woman in the gallery gasped.
Judge Harlan’s gavel cracked once.
“Order.”
But Danny was gone past stopping.
“I panicked,” he said. “I panicked, and I lied, and I let everybody think?—”
His eyes found David.
“My brother didn’t kill Caroline Simms.”
David stared at him like he no longer knew who he was looking at.
“My brother didn’t kill her,” Danny said again, louder now, wrecked and shaking. “I did.”
The courtroom exploded.
Mrs. Mercer sobbed out loud. David shoved back from counsel table so hard his chair skidded. Somebody in the gallery stood. Judge Harlan’s gavel came down again and again.
“Order. Order in this courtroom.”
Across the aisle, Reid had gone white.
Eleanor stood frozen at the podium, every prepared question gone.
She had come into this trying to force out a concealed stop.
She had not expected this.
Behind her, Deck did not move.
He sat with both hands braced on his knees, face hard as stone.
For one stunned second, Reid could not make his body move.
The case was gone.
He looked at Harper and knew instantly she had not seen this coming either. She had gone into that line of questioning to expose a buried stop, a lie, a poisoned piece of the investigation.
She had not expected Danny Mercer to confess to killing Caroline Simms in open court.
The jurors were staring.
David Mercer looked like a man who had just been split in two, horror and disbelief carved across his face.
